William L. Fox

[spiritualorchid.livejournal.com]

rust    in    the    street

rust    in    the    sand

glass    underfoot    and

rust    in    your    hand




( sand in your mouth )

~William L. Fox, six parts, from the book reading sand

(no subject)

[mixedupfiles.livejournal.com]

Some In Pieces
Daniel Arnoult

In World War Two
the oldest
of my uncles
picked up
dead bodies
dead weight
some in pieces
and threw them
onto the beds
of trucks.
His work spread
far as he could see.
When he came
home he poured
salted peanuts
into a Co-Cola
and prepared
for life
with folks
who could
never know
some things
as long
as they lived.

Choose Something Like a Star - Robert Frost

[mary-re.livejournal.com]

rabidpenguin just posted Bright Star by Keats, and I was reminded of this poem, which references it.

Choose Something Like a Star

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud-
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

-Robert Frost

Kudzu

[mehinda.livejournal.com]

Japan invades. Far Eastern vines
Run from the clay banks they are

Supposed to keep from eroding.
Up telephone poles,
Which rear, half out of leafage
As though they would shriek,
Like things smothered by their own
Green, mindless, unkillable ghosts.
In Georgia, the legend says
That you must close your windows

At night to keep it out of the house.
The glass is tinged with green, even so,

As the tendrils crawl over the fields.
The night the kudzu has
Your pasture, you sleep like the dead.
Silence has grown Oriental
And you cannot step upon ground:
Your leg plunges somewhere
It should not, it never should be,
Disappears, and waits to be struck

Anywhere between sole and kneecap:
For when the kudzu comes,

The snakes do, and weave themselves
Among its lengthening vines,
Their spade heads resting on leaves,
Growing also, in earthly power
And the huge circumstance of concealment.
One by one the cows stumble in,
Drooling a hot green froth,
And die, seeing the wood of their stalls

Strain to break into leaf.
In your closed house, with the vine

Tapping your window like lightning,
You remember what tactics to use.
In the wrong yellow fog-light of dawn
You herd them in, the hogs,
Head down in their hairy fat,
The meaty troops, to the pasture.
The leaves of the kudzu quake
With the serpents' fear, inside

The meadow ringed with men
Holding sticks, on the country roads.

The hogs disappear in the leaves.
The sound is intense, subhuman,
Nearly human with purposive rage.
There is no terror
Sound from the snakes.
No one can see the desperate, futile
Striking under the leaf heads.
Now and then, the flash of a long

Living vine, a cold belly,
Leaps up, torn apart, then falls

Under the tussling surface.
You have won, and wait for frost,
When, at the merest touch
Of cold, the kudzu turns
Black, withers inward and dies,
Leaving a mass of brown strings
Like the wires of a gigantic switchboard.
You open your windows,

With the lightning restored to the sky
And no leaves rising to bury

You alive inside your frail house,
And you think, in the opened cold,
Of the surface of things and its terrors,
And of the mistaken, mortal
Arrogance of the snakes
As the vines, growing insanely, sent
Great powers into their bodies
And the freedom to strike without warning:

From them, though they killed
Your cattle, such energy also flowed

To you from the knee-high meadow
(It was as though you had
A green sword twined among
The veins of your growing right arm--
Such strength as you would not believe
If you stood alone in a proper
Shaved field among your safe cows--):
Came in through your closed

Leafy windows and almighty sleep
And prospered, till rooted out.

Ballad Of The Moon, Moon

[godplaysdice.livejournal.com]

Langston Hughes's translations of Lorca's Gypsy Ballads were not included in Hughes's Collected Works courtesy of copyright issues, but thanks to the wonder of the internets, they're available online here. Technology, how I do love you!

Ballad Of The Moon, Moon
by Federico García Lorca
translated by Langston Hughes

The moon came to the forge
with her bustle of spikenards.
The child looks, looks.
The child is looking.
In the trembling air
the moon moves her arms
showing breasts hard as tin,
erotic and pure.
     Fly, moon, moon, moon,
     for if the gypsies come
     they'll make rings
     and white necklaces
     out of your heart
Child, let me dance!
When the gypsies come
they'll find you on the anvil
with your little eyes closed.
     Fly, moon, moon, moon
     because I hear their horses.
Child leave me alone, and don't
touch my starchy whiteness.

The horseman draws near
beating the drum of the plain.
Within the forge the child
has its eyes closed.

Through the olive groves
come gypsies bronzed and dreamy,
their heads held high
and their eyes half-closed.

How the owl hoots!
How it hoots in the treetops!
Through the sky a moon goes
with a child by the hand.

Within the forge
gypsies weep, crying loudly.
The air veils her, veils her.
The air is veiling her.

(no subject)

[2much-estrogen.livejournal.com]

SYLVIA'S DEATH by Anne Sexton
for Sylvia Plath

O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,

( with two children, two meteors )

--

If Sylvia and Anne were lovers theirs would be a crazy love.

(no subject)

[redheartleaf.livejournal.com]

The Crossed Apple


I've come to give you fruit from out my orchard,
Of wide report.
I have trees there that bear me many apples.
Of every sort:

Clear, streaked; red and russet; green and golden;
Sour and sweet.
This apple's from a tree yet unbeholden,
Where two kinds meet, -

So that this side is red without a dapple,
And this side's hue
Is clear and snowy. It's a lovely apple.
It is for you.

Within are five black pips as big as peas,
As you will find,
Potent to breed you five great apple trees
Of varying kind:

To breed you wood for fire, leaves for shade,
Apples for sauce.
Oh, this is a good apple for a maid,
It is a cross,

Fine on the finer, so the flesh is tight,
And grained like silk.
Sweet Burning gave the red side, and the white
Is Meadow Milk.

Eat it, and you will taste more than the fruit:
The blossom, too,
The sun, the air, the darkness at the root,
The rain, the dew,

The earth we came to, and the time we flee,
The fire and the breast.
I claim the white part, maiden, that's for me.
You take the rest.


Bogan, Louise. 1929. Dark Summer.

The work of Louise Bogan (1897-1970) shares the restrained,
intellectual style and traditional elements of English
Metaphysical poets, while retaining a sense of modernity and
the personal.

Although her first book was published in 1923, she wrote
throughout her life, with her last book published the year
of her death in 1970. Bogan was also an accomplished
literary critic, known for her objectivity and fairness.

"Crossed Apple" is Bogan's poetic twist on the fairy tale
theme, mixing the poisoned apple motif with that of
male/female sexuality.

(no subject)

[redheartleaf.livejournal.com]

Shadow


Here you are near me once more
Memories of my comrades in battle
Olive of time
Memories composing now a single memory
As a hundred furs make only one coat
As those thousands of wounds make only one
newspaper article
Impalpable dark appearance you have assumed
The changing form of my shadow
An Indian hiding in wait throughout eternity
Shadow you creep near me
But you no longer hear me
You will no longer know the divine poems I sing
But I hear you I see you still
Destinies
Multiple shadow may the sun watch over you
You who love me so much you will never leave me
You who dance in the sun without stirring the dust
Shadow solar ink
Handwriting of my light
Caisson of regrets
A god humbling himself


Apollinaire, Guillaume.

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) played a central part in
the avant-garde movement that swept through the French
literary and artistic circles during the early 20th century.
Much of his early history is unknown, and even the origin of
his original name remains clouded by contradictions. Like
Stein, his work was influenced by the Cubist movement in the
arts. The book Alcools, written in 1913, is considered his
greatest work, darting from formal poems (like alexandrines
and regular stanzas) to those devoid of rhyme, regularity,
and punctuation.

What makes Alcools a respected work of art, however, is his
ability to capture scenes and experiences in refreshing ways
that carry a familiarity and truth among the reader (if only
on an emotional level). These "refreshing ways" were
manifested in experiments on the page that included a
fracturing (collage) of images, and an almost equal
disregard and respect for tradition.

Apollinaire is credited for introducing the word
"surrealist" for the first time, which appeared in his
introduction to the drama "The Breasts of Tiresias" (1918).
His unique verbal associations became the foundation for the
movement known as "Surrealism." He died in the great
influenza epidemic of 1918.

Gregory Corso- I Am 25

[trashcan-chica.livejournal.com]

"With a love a madness for Shelley
Chatterton Rimbaud
and the needy-yap of my youth
has gone from ear to ear:
I HATE OLD POETMEN!
Especially old poetmen who retract
who consult other old poetmen
who speak their youth in whispers,
saying:-- I did those then
but that was then
that was then--
O I would be quiet old men
say to them:--I am your friend
what you once were, thru me
you'll be again--
Then at night in the confidence of their homes
rip out their apology-tongues
and steal their poems."

Letter to N.Y., Elizabeth Bishop

[moireach.livejournal.com]

Letter To N.Y.
Elizabeth Bishop

   for Louise Crane


In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

--Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

matthew lewis

[whos-on-1st.livejournal.com]

ALONZO THE BRAVE, AND FAIR IMOGINE

A Warrior so bold, and a Virgin so bright
Conversed, as They sat on the green:
They gazed on each other with tender delight;
Alonzo the Brave was the name of the Knight,
The Maid’s was the Fair Imogine.
( Read more... )

( I love a dark gothic love poem, don't you?)